The 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan delivered a blow to the nascent Afghan film industry. But a resilient and determined group of exiled filmmakers are finding their voices once again.
“Wherever I am, the sky belongs to me
Wherever I am, the sky is mine
The sky is mine
The window, the thought, the air, the love, the earth — all are mine
هر کجا باشم آسمان از آن من است
هر کجا باشم آسمان مال من است
آسمان از آن من است
پنجره، فکر، هوا، عشق، زمین — همه مال من است
(Sohrab Sepehri– The Sky is Mine)
From the beginning, humans have understood that in order to live, they must travel. These migrations have given rise to diverse cultures and arts. Since I began living in exile, I have been noticing people who have come from somewhere else. Each of them carries a story of travel. These stories resemble a museum of migration.
So, we are all like a small, living museum. We carry stories that speak of peace and new beginnings. Stories to stop wars and build lives full of hope and creativity
What can I say… Where can I begin… It’s tough to talk about it.
This is our first family photo in exile. I was seven years old. To obtain our migration card in Iran, we were required to take a small 3×4 cm ID photo. That administrative necessity became the occasion for capturing the only family photograph we ever had. I was curious, staring into the camera. That same childhood curiosity soon drew me back to the neighborhood studio, where I began an apprenticeship in photography — the beginning of a path that would later lead me to cinema.
The fall of the Afghan government in 2021 and the takeover by the Taliban was not just the collapse of a political system; it was the fall of twenty years of effort, investment, education, and dreams. It was the fall of our generation..
In 2002, my family, my friends, and I had all returned to Afghanistan after years spent as refugees. We had arrived from Iran, Pakistan, and Tajikistan. From refugee camps, from various places on the margins. We were young people who had come back to a country that was only just beginning to find itself.
Afghanistan, in those years, was a country in the process of rebuilding itself. In politics, in the economy, in culture, in education — it was as if everything was being born anew. Or so it seemed to me. And amid this rebirth, we were learning how to make films.
Little by little, we managed to gather a group of like‑minded young people from different ethnic backgrounds. What bound us together was cinema and filmmaking. We had no fixed place to work or hold our meetings.
Sometimes we met at a small apartment in west Kabul, sometimes at one friend’s house or another. At night, we would gather and watch films and talk. One would speak of their love for Tarantino, another about Asghar Farhadi, another about Nuri Bilge Ceylan. One only watched documentaries; another was drawn to animation.
But all of us shared one thing: a hunger for images, for storytelling, for seeing something beyond the everyday life of Kabul. In those years, an experimental, idea‑driven cinema was slowly emerging in Afghanistan — not from the state or official institutions, but from the efforts of independent filmmakers.
Afghan cinema still had a long way to go before it reached consistent production. But the fact that short fiction films, documentaries, animations, and occasionally one or two feature films were being made each year showed that something was in motion. The younger generation was working hard, and we were driven by an impulse to tell our stories.
My friends and I worked in small groups of two‑ or three‑person teams, often working late into the night in our homes or offices: editing, recording sound, designing sets, or writing scripts. Collaborative work was a lifeline for us — not only because of budgets and resources, but because we needed solidarity. In a country whose politics were full of linguistic and ethnic dividing lines, cinema was the place where we could become a “we.” If anything had the power to free us from imposed borders, it was the image. It was the light. It was the silence between two shots.
In Kabul, we often made films with a very small team and for no pay; no one charged anyone, and despite all the shortages, we were happy.
But Afghanistan is a land that has never truly belonged to itself. Every time we tried to build ourselves, someone else destroyed us. The absence of inner unity — and, worse, the political deals and agreements made from outside the country — once again brought everything crashing down.
The fall of the Afghan government in 2021 and the takeover by the Taliban was not just the collapse of a political system; it was the fall of twenty years of effort, investment, education, and dreams. It was the fall of our generation. At Kabul airport, I felt as if I were witnessing the Day of Judgment.
The scenes looked like something out of a zombie film — people climbing the walls, planes taking off while young men fell from the sky. We Afghans are used to leaving — some at night, some in daylight. Some across land borders, some from the airport. I was once again part of a generation of exiles.
I now live in France, a place that was not a destination I had ever had in mind. It was fate. When I arrived, I had lost everything. No homeland, no home, no language. I remember how isolated I felt. One day in Paris, I looked out from behind my room’s curtain. I saw that nothing had changed. This house, this street, these people — they were still the same house, the same street, the same people. It was I who had changed.
In exile, even the most industrious and creative people are reduced to foldable beds in a nameless hall, where dreams hang suspended between an army blanket and a yellowed ceiling.
In the early years in France, cinema was no longer my priority. I could no longer make films with ease. Like someone who hasn’t played an instrument for years, I am now hesitantly, cautiously placing my fingers back on the keys. After several years, I began to reconnect with cinema. Through social media, I found friends and former colleagues who had been with me in Kabul and were now refugees in different countries.
We reached out to one another, encouraged each other, and made a promise to keep going. We began our weekly online meetings. We talked about ideas, worked on scripts, and shared our memories. That creative circle, though once scattered, was now taking shape again — this time without borders, in the digital space, but with the same old passion.
Little by little, I managed to get into university, and after a long period of saving, I bought a second‑hand camera and sound system. Now that I am standing behind the camera again, I can feel with all my being how much has changed. In Kabul, filmmaking for us was an act of resistance. We made films so we could be seen, so the world would know we existed.
Even if the audience was only five people in a dark room, we still made them. For me, cinema means the dusty streets of Kabul, the call to prayer cutting through the middle of a dialogue, the actors who weren’t actors but acted with all their hearts.
Here in France, everything is on paper: planning, forms, proposals. Making a film is very expensive, and you have to spend months entangled in paperwork just to possibly secure a budget.
In the End
There is something that has been weighing on my mind for some time now — the fact that we have grown accustomed to leaving. We have learned to pack our bags and go whenever a crisis arrives. But this habit must end somewhere. We must stay. We must resist. We must speak, reason, and argue. Escape is not always the solution.
Sometimes I think I wish that after the fall of Afghanistan, no one had helped us leave. I wish we had been forced to stay and carry on. If the young and educated generation had remained in the country and resisted, the Taliban would now be facing a far greater challenge.
Because above all, the Taliban fear the youth. They fear people who ask questions and people who create. We must learn that sometimes staying is braver than leaving. Staying means enduring hardships while planting the seeds of the future. And if Afghanistan is ever to come alive again, that life will come from staying and standing firm, not from perpetual exile.
Article photo credit: Ghafar Azad.
